(“Likeness of Luke the Drifter”–provided by DWB)
I write this on May 4, 2025.
My mother passed away in May of 2011. I often used to listen to Townes Van Zandt’s classic song “Sanitarium Blues” on my way to and from the various dementia wards she was incarcerated in for the last six or so years of her 69-year-long life.
I visited her religiously multiple times per week for every single week she was in there.
She had a form of dementia which was not quite diagnosable in conventional terms. For me, she’d turned into a kind of silent saint who’d purposefully, but also not on purpose, removed herself from the madness beyond the walls, i.e. early twenty-first century USA.
She could see it all coming. She always knew who I was. I knew this from the way she always looked at me with a silent knowing which told me she knew exactly who I was.
In May of 2012, my (now ex-) wife was diagnosed with breast cancer two weeks after we (mutually agreed upon) split up.
In May of 2013, I was forced to cut off all contact with a very special friend, a red-haired, blue-eyed, brilliant Chicago stage actress who had offered me enormous consolation at one point but whose multiple personality disorders were no longer allowing me to be myself, as they say. Anyone who’s ever been deeply entangled with a partial (sometimes full-on) narcissist who also possesses histrionic, borderline, and occasionally substance use disorders, not to mention an endless talent for cheating on you and covering her tracks continuously even though you know something’s up anyway, will understand how horrible and draining such a relationship, and breakup, can be (including having to look over your shoulder at night for a while). (Perhaps truer words than these were never spoken: “I do believe her, though I know she lies.” – Mr. Shakes.)
In May of 2014, I lost my job after a total of fifteen years working at the same place.
In May of 2015, I suffered a mental breakdown that was occasioned by a pill addiction that (accidentally) caught me in its grip.
In May of 2016, I was slammed with fresh waves of grief over the passing on two months earlier of my beloved dog, sidekick, assistant, friend, and family member, Cowboy Brown Barrigar.
In May of 2020, George Floyd was crucified on national TV, an event that shook me far deeper than I can even describe right now.
In May of 2024, I suffered a stroke at the age of 57. (Fully recovered now.)
I can’t remember right now what happened in May of ’17, ’18, ’19, ’21, ’22, ’23, etc., but somewhere in there, there was a pandemic and there are probably a few other tragic events I’m leaving out, but you get the picture.
And yet I still love the Merry Month of May. I love it for itself, and I love it because I love and appreciate all the months, and all the seasons, of the year. I love and appreciate them all because I don’t know which month I’ll be leaving this Planet during. I also never know how many more times I’ll be seeing the Merry Month of May roll around, so I want to appreciate this one just in case I happen to miss the rest of them.
My poem “Chicago Spleen” is a bounce-back poem, kind of like how the plants all bounce back in May in northern Illinois where I live. “Bouncing back” means not letting it get you down, whatever “it” is. It does NOT mean we do not sometimes EMBRACE our depression, horror, anxiety, and sadness. Pretending everything is A-OK when it manifestly is NOT ok can truly be a fool’s errand. On the other hand, when we consider the fact that this might be the very last time on Planet Earth we ever get to see whatever month we’re in at the time, it gives one pause and makes her or him wonder what’s really worth getting all upset about.
Herman Melville’s book-length poem CLAREL has probably been read in its entirety by less than fifty people, ever, on this Planet, and that’s no joke.
It ends with these lines: “And even death may prove unreal at last / and stoics be astounded into heaven.”
Notation: The title of my poem is a reference to Charles Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen, a small book, a thin, vast work that has a magical significance for me, AND for the protagonist of the following poem.
Chicago Spleen; or, The Christmas Decision
A writer decided to try and hammer
together her book once
and for all
on Christmas Eve
of 2013 CE.
When the decision hit,
for some reason she
looked over at
the clock
on the wall
of the bus station.
Okay. 7:46 P.M.
Central Time in the United States
of Illinois, 21st century
blues-return
style.
46
was her favorite
number.
She didn’t know
why then, but she knew
there is always a reason.
Every time she saw
that number,
she would think
it must be
something good, like
a positive warning
that something good
was coming even if
it never really came
or it had already been here
before that
even though you didn’t
know it – until
now.
She didn’t go running
around the streets telling
anybody about it.
She just thought it,
it sitting
quietly there
in her mind
because she
told herself
(out loud),
“I have trained
my mind.”
She also believed
(like so many others
of us) that 7
is a heavenly
number.
When she saw the “7:46”
of the digital wall clock flashing
at her, like a meaningfully
meaningless wink, her “I”
decided again to try
and commit to this.
Even though, or maybe
especially because,
she found herself
sitting in a bus station
by herself
on Christmas Eve.
Even if it makes her
die the deaths, the endless
deaths,
she thought
to herself.
Even if it makes me
die the death!
She told herself,
and the rear end of his bus,
as his bus
disappeared.
Dale W. Barrigar is a poet and shirt sleeves religious philosopher from Berwyn and Oak Park, Illinois, USA, where hover the ghosts of Frank Lloyd Wright and Ernest Heminway whose spirits are endless inspirations around every corner. Barrigar was transformed into a believer in miracles by the hard knocks of life.
Saragun Springs 